Henrietta Reitz (1900 - 1978)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Henrietta's lifetime.

In 1900, in the year that Henrietta Reitz was born, Carrie Chapman Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. NAWSA was created by Anthony in 1890 in order to fight for the right of women to vote in the United States. Membership in NAWSA began at 7,000 and in the decades of the struggle - women didn't get the right to vote until 1920 - membership rose to 2 million.

In 1928, at the age of 28 years old, Henrietta was alive when Mickie Mouse was born! He first appeared in Disney's Steamboat Willie, along with Minnie. Although they were in two previous shorts, this was the first to be distributed. Steamboat Willie took advantage of the new technology and was a "talkie" - music was coordinated with the animation. It became the most popular cartoon of its day.

In 1932, when she was 32 years old, five years to the day after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart flew solo from Newfoundland to Ireland, the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo and the first to replicate Lindbergh's feat. She flew over 2,000 miles in just under 15 hours.

In 1951, when she was 51 years old, on April 5th, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (husband and wife) were sentenced to death for treason. They were executed on June 19th. American citizens, they were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. Their two young sons were adopted by a high school teacher and his wife.

In 1978, in the year of Henrietta Reitz's passing, on November 18th, Jim Jones's Peoples Temple followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana - where they had moved, from San Francisco, as a group. Jones was the leader of the cult and ordered his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch, which they did. Whole families (women and children included) died - more than 900 people in all.